Generally, an electro-photographic image forming apparatus such as a laser printer forms a developer image corresponding to a certain image on a print medium, and uses a fixing apparatus that permanently fixes the developer image onto the print medium by applying heat and pressure to the developer image.
The fixing apparatus includes a pair of rollers, namely, a heat roller configured to generate heat to be applied to the print medium and a fixing roller configured to apply a predetermined pressure to the print medium.
However, these days, image forming apparatuses for high-speed printing have widely used a fixing apparatus configured to use a fixing belt of an endless belt instead of a heat roller.
However, since fatigue cracks occur at opposite ends of the fixing belt due to repetitive rotation of the fixing belt, there is a problem that the fixing apparatus using the fixing belt has a short life-span.
Accordingly, a fixing apparatus that can increase a service life by suppressing the fatigue crack at opposite ends of a fixing belt is required to be developed.